Univision is at the center of a growing controversy in the wake of a recent interview with former President Trump that critics have labeled as too friendly.

The interview that aired on November 9

was noticeably warm, and Trump received little pushback for being false or misleading

statements on border security and immigration policies he instituted as president.

The reaction from certain corners of the Latino community was swift,

ranging from inclusive

calls for more balanced reporting

until and

an outright boycott of the television network ahead of the 2024 elections.

Latinos are considered a critical voting bloc and are largely up for grabs in next year’s election, likely a rematch between Trump and President Biden.

While Although

Latino voters have historically favored Democrats, the Republican Party has made significant progress in getting their votes in recent years

.

The exclusive interview with Trump therefore caused significant alarm within the Democratic Party and its allies

that the leading Republican candidate made a variety of unverified claims to key swing voters.

Actor John Leguizamo posted a video to his 1 million Instagram followers on Thursday criticizing the Spanish-language media company for “softballing Trump” and reportedly canceling ads for Biden. He said the television network has become a “MAGA vision.”

He encouraged fellow entertainers, athletes, activists and politicians to join him in boycotting the network

it she

restored equality, and parity and parity among the presidential candidates.

The television network has done the same

asked for an interview with Biden

according to the Washington Post.

The more than hour-long interview with Trump was conducted by Enrique Acevedo, a host for the Mexican network Televisa, who is not a Univision journalist. The two media groups merged last year. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is said to have helped arrange the interview.

All you have to do is look at the owners of Univision, Trump said in the first few minutes of the interview when asked about Latino voters and recent polls showing him beating President Biden in 2024. They’re incredibly enterprising people, and they like me.

“They want to see safety,” Trump added. “They want to have a border.”

During the interview, Trump made dubious claims that the partial wall built along the southern border was made possible by Mexico providing thousands of soldiers “for free,” and that the former president

Barracks

Obama laid the groundwork for the controversial border policy to discourage illegal crossings that became known as the family separation crisis. Acevedo has not pushed back on either claim.

It wasn’t just a friendly interview. It was an embarrassing hour-long puff piece with lots of smiles and no pushback whatsoever, featuring a man who enjoyed attacking, belittling and otherizing Latinos and Latin American immigrants: Ana Navarro-Crdenas, a prominent Nicaraguan

–

American political strategist and commentator, said on platform Xthe company formerly known as Twitter.

Len Krauze, a veteran news anchor for Univision, has since resigned from the network. He did not give a reason for his departure.

Sen. Susan Rubio (D-Baldwin Park), a member of the California Latino Legislative Caucus who is currently running for Congress, said she knew many other Latino leaders who were personally upset about the interview.

Rubio said yes

What

appalled at how the former president could continue to spout lies and speak uncontrollably during the conversation. She called the interview

bee

“an insult to our entire Latino community.”

According to the report, thousands more migrant children are likely being removed from their families than previously disclosed

The network is definitely influential in households like hers, she said, describing it as a news source that she and her Spanish-speaking parents consider reliable and unbiased.

Our community trusts this information to be truthful. They rely on this resource that has been trusted by the Latino community for many, many generations,” she said. “They should have done a better job of making sure our community isn’t being lied to.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus also plans to send a letter

to steer

to the television network requesting a meeting with its CEO, Wade Davis, and calling for stronger guardrails against disinformation, according to a draft copy of the letter reviewed by The Times.

Univision news anchor Len Krauze is leaving the network after the network’s controversial Trump interview. A group of more than seventy organizations, including prominent Latino groups such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, America’s Voice, and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, also signed an open letter to Davis and other TelevisaUnivision executives, sharpening the interview criticized. The letter, first reported by Tthe Post , asks that the network conduct a thorough internal review, take corrective action and reaffirm its commitment to unbiased reporting and keeping the Latino community informed and informed about facts and truth, according to a statement by The Times reviewed copy.

The controversy is more complicated than it seems, says Mike Madrid, a Republican Party political consultant who will soon release a book titled “The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority is Shaping.”

o Oh

our democracy.”

Madrid, who is an outspoken critic of Trump, raised objections to the interview

his are

A reflection of the way the Democratic Party and other left-wing organizations have taken Latino voters for granted and relied on the television network for decades to promote their candidates and policies.

Since the late 1980s, Democrats have relied on Latino voters to win elections, Madrid said. But over the past decade, Democrats have begun bleeding second- and third-generation Latino voters, who are U.S.-born and English-dominant speakers.

Madrid does not dispute that Trump’s interview may have been biased or too cozy, but he said it shows the media company’s shift toward the center and with it a new Latino audience.

“Where were they for the last thirty years when the Democratic Party was getting softball interviews? Democrats have taken this basic vote for granted. They assumed there was and that Univision would always be in their corner, always standing up for them and advocating for them. “Candidates and policies,” he said. “When you take advantage of media bias, objectivity sounds like betrayal. That’s what’s going on.”

Rather than promoting a boycott of the network, which Madrid called “absolute madness,” Democrats should adjust their strategy and woo Latino voters on a variety of issues, such as the economy and employment, rather than only about immigration.

“The Democrats need to figure out very quickly that going to war is not in their interest,” he said. “They’re going to have to learn to fight for this vote when they haven’t done so in decades… And they have less than a year to figure this out.”

Times writer Stephen Battaglio contributed to this report.